ONTARIO – Gowest Gold of Toronto is moving its Bradshaw gold deposit, part of its Frankfield property 32 km northeast of Timmins, forward with the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the treatment of its concentrate with United Commodities AG (UC), a Swiss company that owns the Yukon refinery in North Cobalt, ON.
The agreement calls for UC to test concentrate samples from Bradshaw, and if the deal moves forward, UC will build a new gold refinery at North Cobalt. Gowest would be invited to become co-owner of the refinery. Two years ago Gowest purchased the pressure autoclave and associated equipment that had been used at the Con mine near Yellowknife, NWT. The equipment will form part of Gowest's commitment to becoming a partner in the refinery.
Gowest also has a non-binding letter of intent with Glencore Xstrata to mill the Bradshaw ore on a custom basis at its Kidd facility, also in Timmins.
The decision to use third party processing rather than build its own plant is saving Gowest a considerable amount in preproduction costs. The project with an annual output of 94,000 oz is expected to cost approximately $60 million, a savings of at least $100 million over the cost of building a new mill and refinery.
Gowest has developed a timeline indicating that gold production from the Bradshaw deposit could begin in Q3 2015. The deposit includes 6.0 million indicated tonnes grading 4.9 g/t Au and containing 945,500 oz of gold. The inferred resource is 3.7 million tonnes grading 4.2 g/t Au and containing 536,800 oz of gold. An underground mine producing roughly 1,500 tonnes of ore daily is likely.
The November 2012 technical report is available at GowestGold.com.
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